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PC-MOS/386

PC-MOS/386 was another multi-user MS-DOS Operating system. And they had some great ads, like above.

I was able to track down a few disks but of them all only the version 5 one seemed to run to some degree under Qemu. Or at least the $386.sys memory driver.

pc-mos 1.02

This is about as much as I got out of PC-MOS/386 1.0

pc-mos 3.00

While PC-MOS/386 3.0 loads, if you try to load the protected mode $386.sys driver it just hangs.

pc-mos 5.01

And PC-MOS/386 5.0 not only loads, but will load up with the protected mode driver on Qemu.

pc-mos 5.01 protected mode

I’ve managed to get a serial ‘terminal’ to run, and for anyone who ever needs the hint, here is the config.sys, autoexec.bat and user01.bat file to make it boot up…. Neither VirtualPC, nor VMWare can boot up with the drivers.

So what is it like? Under emulation lots of keystrokes are lost, and it feels slow. I’m sure it’s a COMPLETELY different story on actual hardware. PC-MOS 5.0 also cannot run DPMI programs, which is a shame. Then again DPMI was a ‘new and exciting’ thing in 1992 so I guess it’s not that surprising. I’m not aware of any support to run Windows 3.1 but again 1992 was when the tide really started to turn to Windows.

As they mention on wiki memory costs, and slow disks of the time certainly made things like PC-MOS really slow.

About neozeed

What is there to tell? I've loved UNIX like things since I was first exposed to QNX in highschool (we had the Unisys ICONS!), and spent the better time of my teenage years trying to get my own UNIX... I should have bought Coherent in retrospect.. Anyways latched onto Linux in 1992, and then got some old BSD admin books and have been hooked on the VAX BSD & other big/ancient things since...!

22 thoughts on “PC-MOS/386”

your 5.01 version, probably the one I made available online a few years ago! I have a 5-user, 9-user (think you're running that) and a 33-user, and with activation codes. Also have the troubleshooting guide, and get this, the Novell Gateway!

As I recall, this one ticked Novell off, because I believe it only tied up (2) connections for the entire PC-MOS system. So, if you had a 33-user PC-MOS, with 33 users, Novell only saw 2 connections, so you could get by with the entry-level 5-user Novell netWare servers of the day.

SOld and installed many PC-MOS systems in the day, and it was a good product. Worked great with Real World / Synchronics accounting.

Had a PCMOS/386 up and running until recently when the hard disk crashed.
When I tried to re-install the OS from the original floppies, found that were unreadable.
Do you know where I can find/download the disk images ?

I was a consultant & VAR (Value Added Reseller) for TSL (The Software Link) and their PC-MOS/386 products, from ’88 until ’94. I both used and installed this OS extensively in our own sw devlpt lab, and at client sites. We setup a lot of turn-key/point-of-sale systems, database apps which required multiple user stations. We nearly always used Wyse terminals (150, 50, or 60). It all worked great. This cut the cost considerably, in contrast with the corresponding ‘network solution’. Up until 2007, I had all of the sw, keys, manuals (in the nice binders) for the 5 and 9 user versions; but after more than a decade of not using them, I parted with everything – including my old i386 & i486 systems. How I now wish I hadn’t!!! But we were moving, departing with and selling everything possible (no room for extras). I’ve just recently started sharing the history of the legacy OSes with my son (who like me likes exploring computer systems and various OSes) and wish that I could show him some older “virtual machine” systems running various DOS versions.

Does anyone know of anyway to obtain the full version of PC-MOS 5.1? I read that it has been place under a GPL of some sort, but the site(s) I’ve visited don’t have any binaries or source to download. We’re trying to put together a lab of legacy systems, and are interested in getting/running the following OSes:

I recently have been cleaning-out our attic and found my old copies of Multiuser Operating systems from the late 80’s to 1994. I found my. TSL Multilink, PC-MOS/386 various versions. PC-MOS Novell Gateway, PC-Emulink and associated Manuals. I’m thinking of running them all as virtual machines inside VMware, VirtualBox, or the open source XenServer. I also have the legacy hardware they use to run on. I have to try to resurrect these old PC that use to run these OS’s to save any info and SW drivers and documentation that are still in them. I hope these diskettes are all still good. I also plan to convert the manuals to pdf later on. I hope they’ll run as virtual machines on my HP servers one is a 32 bit DL580 G2 and migrate it to the DL580 G4 64 bit server. I figured these are at least 20 to 25 year old software and since TSL is no longer around it is considered abandonware and can be duplicated.

I used to debug and disassemble several multiuser systems from the 80’s and early 90’s. I found some of my hacking tools along with my copies of masm tasm and linkers. I may have to use these tools to try to see what’s going on. It will be easier with the source code of pcmos. But I have done it before without the source to patch several multiuser os and dos programs so that they run without directly writing to display memory. But that’s more than 20 to 25 years ago. I have more time in my hands now so I can refresh my memory on how i did it back then. Just need to rebuild my development system and operating system in that time period

I’m trying to build a test vmware setup to load pcmos/386 out of diskettes I found while cleaning out my attic. (See my comment above.) What version of pcmos are you looking for? And what diskette format do you have?

I have used PC-MOS extensively to set up turnkey systems for 20 years and many are still in use. The OS stopped functioning correctly at 8/1/2012. I used to be able to read a file with a Norton hex editor and correct a date code or other feature but in this case I have no idea what kind of date code in the OS file that I’m looking for. Has anyone been able to fix this kill date? and if so, could you share the fix process?